


Quantum Degeneracy

by trell (qunlat)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Memory Related, Post-Movie(s), Short, Skill Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Newt makes a sound from where he's hidden behind his kaiju, behind his arms, and then he croaks, "I can't play anymore."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hermann's eyes flick to the electric keyboard sitting near Newt's desk—a paper-covered, disorganized disaster of a thing—and he says, quietly, "Ah."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quantum Degeneracy

Hermann finds Newt curled up in his new lab, pressed into a corner behind his desk and a hand clutched tightly in his own hair, the tattoos on his arms indistinct and creeping in the dim. Only the desk lamp is on, casting the barest yellow glow over shadowed papers and equipment; Hermann has to pick his way around wires and machines, leaning heavy on his cane as he struggles to step determinately over the mess.

"Newton," he says, once he's close enough, across the worst of the barriers, and, "Newton."

He sees Newt's shoulders shake, sees his fingers change their grip in his dark hair. Hermann hobbles forward and leans on his desk, not daring to come closer. "Newton, what is _wrong,_ " he insists, worry and frustration warring for dominance in his mind until they tangle into one strung-out _thing_ that vibrates in him, resonates with the way Newt looks like an overwrought spring turned human.

Newt makes a sound from where he's hidden behind his kaiju, behind his arms, and then he croaks, "I can't play anymore."

Hermann's eyes flick to the electric keyboard sitting near Newt's desk—a paper-covered, disorganized disaster of a thing—and he says, quietly, "Ah."

For Newt, the syllable is like a floodgate. His voice jumps to the screeching, squeaky octave Hermann's used to hearing when Newt is excited or upset or a mix of the two; he babbles, the words spilling out, "I can't play, I keep trying but my hands won't _do it_ anymore, Hermann, I used to do it all the time every time I got stuck on my research but now when I try it won't come and it's like reading code, the notes don't make sense and my hands go in the wrong places and I—"

" _Newton,_ " Hermann cuts him off, fiercely, pushes off from the table and levers himself inadvisedly to his knees beside him, the pain and inconvenience of rising again be damned. He grabs Newt's hands, unclenches his fingers one by one; takes Newt's wrists and pulls his hands away, Newt half-fighting, half-surrendered.

His eyes are red and watering when Hermann catches his gaze and forces himself to say, controlled and even, "Ever since the drift, I have not been able to draw."

Newt's eyes get bigger, if that's possible, and some of the wild tension seems to leave him, replaced by horrified disbelief. "You . . . you can't draw? All your sketches and diagrams, you—?"

Hermann nods, silent. He does not, he thinks, need words nor the drift to explain himself, just now: the look on Newt's face, the way he's reacting to his own failure with the piano, tells him he already understands.

(The first time Hermann had gotten back to his work after the closing of the Breach, he'd launched into extrapolating on its structure, how they'd managed to get it to break down. He'd gone to sketch it and found his hands disobeying, the lines coming out as though he'd never drawn before.

He'd tried to draw something else, then, something unrelated to mathematics—the dying fern sitting on his windowsill—and failed, rendered something that he might have drawn when he was five.

The pencil he broke is still lying on his desk, together with the crumpled page, a grim reminder.

He hadn't told anyone.)

"I'm so sorry, man," Newt says, his voice hardly audible. His hands have gone relaxed, but Hermann is still holding them, he realizes; he lets go, and they fall to Newt's sides. Newt adds, "That really . . . that really sucks."

Hermann snorts out a laugh at that, looks away. He picks out one of Newt's phrases that seems the most appropriate: "Tell me about it."

And Newt smiles, too, head dropping as his wide, not-quite-right smile spreads over his face, hair falling messily forward. "You told me it was stupid, right? You said I'd fuck myself up." An off-pitch laugh. "I guess I fucked both of us up, instead."

"I said you would get yourself killed," Hermann counters, and pulls himself forward to sit next to Newt, legs protesting, shuddering his way over to rest against the wall. Their shoulders bump together, and Hermann is wearing a sweater and Newt's in his shirtsleeves, but he thinks he feels the warmth all the same.

"We saved the world, though." Newt gives a wheeze that might be intended as a laugh. It sounds a little hysterical. "We were awesome, and this is stupid. I shouldn't be so broken up about forgetting how to play, right? It's not important. Everyone lived, and I just can't . . . I can't make music anymore, that's a stupid thing to be freaked about, right?"

"You should speak to the drift specialists," Hermann says, but it's a weak suggestion, one he does not himself believe. If he'd thought they could do anything, he would have already gone—but this is unprecedented, there's nothing in any of the research papers about losing abilities. It's probably not so much an effect of the drift as it is of the kaiju.

There's no one with answers for him, him and Newt; they're on their own, _rockstars,_ as Newton says. That is what is meant to count.

Echoing his thoughts, Newt says, "Nah, man, what are they gonna do? Besides. Everyone wants me talking about what we did, producing new research, no one cares if I can't play Bon Jovi to cheer myself up anymore."

They sit in silence for a while, then, until Newt says, "It's like I lost part of my brain to the kaiju. And I—I—what are we if we're not our brains, right? What else are we gonna lose?"

"I don't know," Hermann says, honestly. "I suppose we must try not to lose anything else."

Newt drops his head against Hermann's shoulder, then, startling him. "Shit, dude," he says. "Do you think we can even learn what we've lost again? Because keyboards, they—" his hands go out in front of him, make motions like they're pressing down keys, but the action doesn't look practiced; the muscle memory is gone, Hermann can't see the piano player's definition in the gestures, "—they always made sense to me, you know? Since I was a kid. It's never been like _this._ "

And Hermann finds himself confessing, stiff and uncertain of why he is, "I tried to sketch the Sydney Opera House, and found that I could not." He knits his fingers over the top of his cane. "I used to draw it on the edge of my notes when I was thinking. From memory, you know, I could do it without looking."

"I remember," Newt says. "The first time I saw them on your desk I thought they were kaiju spines."

"You would," Hermann says.

"Yeah," Newt sighs, and shuffles over, gets himself off Hermann to link his arms around his knees. "Maybe," he says, tone self-deprecating, "I should get myself some beginner books." A grin creeps across his features. "And a color-by-numbers for you, huh?"

"Don't you dare," Hermann says, and his lips twitch in a smile, just a little. 


End file.
